“Embers From the Blue Cut Fire” (2016), a chromogenic print by Noah Berger, is one of 194 photos featured in the “In the Sunshine of Neglect” exhibit at the California Museum of Photography and the Riverside Art Museum.

Los Angeles is home to the world-famous Hollywood sign and San Francisco has the Golden Gate Bridge. The Inland Empire, it would seem, lacks a similarly identifiable icon that defines the sprawling region.

Douglas McCulloh is hoping to change that and create a new narrative for Inland Southern California through an exhibit that continues through the end of April at two Riverside museums, “In The Sunshine of Neglect: Defining Photographs and Radical Experiments in Inland Southern California, 1950 to the Present.”

On display at both UCR’s California Museum of Photography and the Riverside Art Museum nearby, the exhibit features 194 works by 54 photographers with ties to the region.

Included are Ellen Jantzen’s images of the gigantic Palm Springs windmills under cloudy skies; J. Bennett Fitts’ photo of an abandoned and empty swimming pool in a desolate part of Victorville; Noah Berger’s image of a Cajon Pass hillside covered with glowing red embers during 2016’s Blue Cut Fire; and a black-and-white by Ansel Adams of structures on the UC Riverside campus. That photo was shot between 1963 and 1968 when Adams, best known for several iconic images of Yosemite, had been commissioned by the University of California to shoot photos for its 100th anniversary.

The IE is such a vast place with varied terrain and communities, but its identity is not obscured or defined by existing icons that people recognize, said McCulloh, senior curator at the Museum of Photography. So, he developed the idea for a photography exhibit that would help write the region’s story through images while highlighting the creative work of talented photographers linked to the area.

“I was thinking, ‘Somebody should do a show like this,’” he recalled. “We have 4.5 million people here. The Inland Empire is more populous than 23 states and yet there has been no show.”

With its mountains, deserts, rivers, urban sprawl and diverse communities and terrain, the Inland region is so much more than just that big area between Los Angeles and Palm Springs, McCulloh adds. “It’s like a laboratory for experiment. That’s what this show is. It’s significant artists doing work that changed the trajectoryof art and photo history.”

The exhibit celebrates the region’s diversity, especially its geography.

Photographer Lewis deSoto, who grew up in San Bernardino, attended college in the IE and now lives in Napa, called the exhibit “an important gathering of work that covers many aspects of the Inland Empire.” His black and white photo of Colton’s Slover Mountain, which was mined in the 1800s, features multiple exposures of the moon overhead. It’s the exhibit’s signature image.

But, deSoto said, the exhibit isn’t entirely about beautiful pictures. “It’s about the social history of the place,the environment, the man-made environment, the encroachment on areas that are natural. It covers a lot of ground. It’s a historically important show and has work that covers all the aspects that have not been talked about in one place.”

Kurt Miller, a longtime photographer for The Press-Enterprise who lives in Riverside, has eight photos in the exhibit that document the newspaper staff moving out of their old building on 14th Street in Riverside. During about eight weeks in spring 2018, he shot almost 8,000 images that document the building being literally torn apart — a metaphor of sorts for the dismantling of the newspaper industry.

“It was pretty darn emotional,” said Miller, adding that P-E staffers were still in the building as workers began taking it apart. “I texted Doug, ‘I’m in the newsroom and I’m just shaking.’”

Miller said the massive photo exhibit is personal to all the participants. “I’m proud to be part of this show with all these photographers. The community means so much to us.”

Editor’s note: A version of this story appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of Riverside Magazine.

ON DISPLAY

What: “In The Sunshine of Neglect: Defining Photographs and Radical Experiments in Inland Southern California, 1950 to the Present”

A newspaper, magazine and online journalist in Southern California for three decades, Amy Bentley has written about nearly every topic imaginable, from business and community news to the environment, travel, the justice system, parenting and more. Her writing portfolio can be viewed online at amybentley.contently.com.

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